Abbie Hoffman

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ABBIE HOFFMAN - PAGE 2

Movie legend Steven Spielberg has his eye on Chicago. Spielberg tells Vanity Fair magazine he is developing "The Trial of the Chicago Seven," a film about Vietnam War demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention. "We're in the process right now ... of doing a feasibility study of what actors are available," he told the magazine. An actor under consideration is none other than Sacha Baron Cohen ("Borat"), whom Variety reports is a candidate to play anti-war activist Abbie Hoffman.

No telling just yet if a writers strike is going to affect things, but filmmaker Steven Spielberg (right) is scouting locations around town for "The Trial of the Chicago 7," which was written by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing"). The film focuses on the trials of protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, including Abbie Hoffman. Though the flick is mostly a courtroom drama using some archival footage of protesters clashing with police, Spielberg is expected to be in town in early 2008 for at least four weeks of shooting.

There has never been any real balance on your Commentary page. It had seemed that as far left as you cared to go was Clarence Page or Steve Chapman (admitted worshiper of George Will). With the demise of Abbie Hoffman, I can't think of whom you could get to counterbalance Charles Krauthammer. We are finally (I hope) rid of Linda Chavez and her predictable assessments, then you give us Dennis Byrne. Linda, for all of her faults, could write. Now a couple of columns by Molly Ivins.

Bob Greene shows his usual oafish insipidness by thinking Abbie Hoffman dreamed of TV nirvana watching HBO and MTV. In the late `60s and early `70s, cable TV visionaries yearned for public access TV where every citizen would have a soapbox and every opinion would be heard. Cable TV has made public access stations a reality but unfortunately they haven`t turned out to be the political forum that Abbie dreamed of 20 years ago. Like most technological fantasies, reality is not as much fun as the dream.

With the release of "Steal This Movie!" on Aug. 25, the late Abbie Hoffman -- or at least Vincent D'Onofrio playing the '60s radical in a biopic -- is back on film. Despite a limited acting range (he mostly played himself), the following filmography (a mix of feature films, documentaries, etc.) provide another look at the man born Abbott Hoffman: - "The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg" (1993) - "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989) - "Heavy Petting" (1988) - "Growing Up In America" (1987)

Dixie D. Collins (May 4) rewrites history blaming Abbie Hoffman and others for violence at the Chicago Democratic Convention. She ignores or forgets that a blue-ribbon commission found that the violence was the direct result of a "police riot," depriving citizens of their rights to assemble in peaceful dissent to their government's actions. On the day of the riot, I, at that time a federal government attorney, witnessed scores of Chicago patrolmen massed outside of my government office building, gloating over their "exploits" the night before, and boasting how to pursue their violent actions of beating and headbashing the young people who were trying to assemble to protest an unjust war. One added note: A higher court in time overturned the judgments of Judge Julius Hoffmann, an arrogant, posturing, petty man bereft of wisdom and legal ethics, in the Conspiracy Seven trial, vindicating the defendants.

Rewriting history eventually catches up with you. The pseudonym for the eight Conspiracy Trial defendants became "The Chicago Seven" after Bobby Seale's case was severed from the other seven. The continuing use of this misnomer makes counting difficult 20 years hence. Thus, in your obituary on Abbie Hoffman (early edition, April 13) where you listed the other "Chicago Seven" defendants you, of course, stopped with six names; it was Lee Weiner you missed. Since the activities of those who took to the streets in the Second American Revolution in the `60s and `70s are now attracting the curiosity of our children, it would be fitting to remember all eight who stood trial for exercising their constitutional right to question the actions of our government.

Daley, Daley, give me your answer true. Yes, that is Hizzoner the First pictured (far right) on a bicycle built for two. It's no wonder that his son, Hizzoner the Second, loves cycling, for Hizzoner the First, sources say, was a closet biker himself. Daley Sr. posed for the unlikely photo in 1956 to promote 36 new bicycle paths in Chicago area parks and forest preserves. His partner on the tandem was Dr. Paul Dudley White, President Eisenhower's cardiologist and an early proselytizer for the health and stress-fighting benefits of biking.

The federal judge was totally fed up with Abbie Hoffman's antics. But Hoffman, bad boy of political activists, wouldn't let up. "Wait until you see the movie. ... The movie's going to be better," Hoffman taunted the judge. Wrong, wrong. The movie is not nearly as good as the actual trial of Hoffman and others in the aftermath of the bloody anti-war demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Despite writer-director Brett Morgen's big screen use of animated characters -- glorified cartoons -- to try to bring the trial to life, the real thing was infinitely more entertaining.

Jerry Rubin, now 46, returned to public attention in the 1970s when he began working for a brokerage house in New York City. Involved in the "awareness movement" of the `70s, Rubin sponsored "The Event"--a 14 1/ 2-hour awareness program with speakers such as Werner Erhard and Masters and Johnson--in New York City in 1978. For a time, he was involved in the marketing of food products, and today he and his wife, Mimi, run a networking organization in New York City for young, upwardly mobile businesspeople.